Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Cutting Edge: 3-D Tech Boosts Surgical Precision

“3-D glasses aid
doctors carry through invasive surgery when their hands are hidden from view.”

Now 3D glasses are not for moviegoers alone doctors could
make some assistance from it as well.
This is suggested by new studies. Doctors preferred to rely on their own
experiences having doubts and being skeptic about using the 3D technology but
this was all in the past. This may now
change; it is all because of the new and improved 3D glasses and even
glasses-free systems. The study of 50
surgeons using the new technology showed improvements in surgical precision and
speed—funded by industry sponsors. “While the technology still requires some
fine-tuning, technology without the need to wear special glasses will increase
the popularity of 3D systems in operating rooms,” study leader Ulrich Leiner of
the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI) in Berlin said in a statement.

Upgrading screens are lashing advancements in 3D technology
and now high-definition screens are already available. According to study co-author Michael Witte of
HHI, the next step is ultra-high definition, with a sixteenfold improvement in
resolution. To test it and evaluate the new 3D technology, researchers invited
surgeons from the Klinikum rechts der Isar’s surgical hospital, they will
determine if the technology is ready for hospital applications. A leading endoscope manufacturer and an
international display company financed the study. The surgeons tried-and-true
four different systems: 2D, 3D with glasses, 3D without glasses and a
mirror-based 3D system. The glasses-free
model relied on an eye-tracking camera system that delivered separate images to
each eye, creating a 3D effect in the brain.

The technology works like this, the images came from
endoscopic cameras used in surgery. The doctors practiced a replicated, routine
surgical procedure in which they sewed up a wound in a model patient’s stomach
using a needle and thread. Just as in a
minimally invasive surgery, their hands were covered from view and to see what
they were doing they depend on the screen. “The results were astonishing,”
Hubertus Feußner, of the Klinikum rechts der Isar university hospital in
Munich, said in a statement. The winning surgeon performed the procedure in 15
percent less time and with considerably increased precision, Feußner said. According
to the researchers, the most surprising thing was that not only young surgeons
benefited, but experienced surgeons also.
The doctor that had won and performed best has worked at the hospital
for more than 30 years and has conducted thousands of operations.

The surgeons who participated in the study rated the 3D
glasses system the highest while the glasses-free system as comparable to the
2D one. Once the technology is widely available, will doctors begin using it?
“There’s no doubt that 3D will be a commodity in the future,” Witte said. The
study’s results will be forwarded and presented at a congress of the
Association of German Surgeons in Berlin in April of this year. However, the findings have not been published
in a scientific peer-reviewed journal.